Religion

April, 2016

Police arrest children’s minister Willie Lee Bell Jr, 29, at First United Church of Cedar Hill as he’s caught in the act of molesting a 6-year old Witnesses beat a Texas youth pastor caught in the act of sexually a 6-year old boy he lured behind an apartment building before …

Principal at tiny Seventh-day Adventist school in Washington state charged with sexually assaulting two female students, Claims one of the victims asked for it Douglas J. Allison, a 55 year old principal of a tiny Christian school in a small Washington town has been charged with sexually assaulting two female …

March, 2016

Matthew Lane Durham, a 21 year old former missionary from Oklahoma was sentenced in US federal court Monday to 40 years in prison for serially molesting and raping children at a Kenyan orphanage, at least one of whom was just 5 years old. US District Judge David L Russell handed …

At the end of a criminal trial linked to Tuesday’s report of systematic sexual abuse of children in the Altoona-Johnstown Dioceses and the two bishops responsible for hiding their crimes, the first of approximately 50 Western Pennsylvania priests accused of raping children was sentenced to a long prison term. A 71-year-old Catholic priest in Pennsylvania …

It has been revealed that hundreds of children were sexually abused over a period of at least four decades by priests and other leaders within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown in Pennsylvania. The findings by a statewide grand-jury, which was released Tuesday morning by the office of Pennsylvania State …

February, 2016

On Friday, the Republican-majority Georgia Senate passed a bill to allow legal discrimination of gays and lesbians as part of “religious freedom.” The bill, which passed 38 to 14 along party lines, would allow for faith-based organizations to refuse service to same-sex couples. The bill, which is a hybrid of …

The Justice Department has announced that Martin Alan Schnitzler, 43, pleaded guilty to “obstructing persons in the free exercise of religious beliefs” in the Middle District of Florida for a Nov. 13, 2015 hate crime against Muslims. He is responsible for calling two mosques located in Pinellas County, Florida to make …

Larycia Hawkins, the Christian professor suspended by Wheaton College for wearing hijab out of solidarity with the Muslim women who face discrimination in the Christmas season, will not be returning to work. In December 2015, Hawkins was put on leave after making the following statement on her Facebook page along …

January, 2016

Last week Marco Rubio announced the formation of a new religious liberty advisory board in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Among the fifteen members, Wayne Grudem stands out as the leader of “complementarianism,” a movement he created. Slate: “Within American evangelicalism, there are two broad camps when it …

Time and again, we’ve heard prominent members of the GOP make racially charged comments when discussing crime, gun violence, immigration, and social policies. We roll our eyes, we laugh, we look the other way, or most typically, we subvert a combination of all three. It’s the GOP’s awkward elephant (pun …

Via International Business Times/Raw Story: A lawyer says the number of children sexually or physically abused by priests while serving in a choir run by Pope Emeritus Benedict’s brother at their Catholic school in the German city of Regensburg totals 231. That’s more than three times as many cases as had been reported …

Muslim women are speaking out that they feel particularly targeted by a section of the American population which has failed to distinguish Muslim-Americans from terrorists. Women wearing hijab may feel as if they might as well be wearing targets on their bodies. Sirin Kale reports on the recent incidents of …

“An Islamic State militant carried out a public “execution” of his mother because she asked him to leave the group, activists say. Ali Saqr, 21, killed his mother, Lena al-Qasem, 45, outside the post office in Raqqa, Syria, eyewitnesses said.” Full Story – BBC

For decades Bill Gothard was the influential leader of a Christian homeschool movement that drew in conservative Christian families such as the Duggars from “19 Kids and Counting.” The now 81-year old resigned in 2014 after being accused by 30 women including minors of sexual harassment and molestation. On Wednesday 10 …